


Welcome to the Fire

by LinneaKou



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Politics, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Gen, Minor Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-09 07:01:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18911911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LinneaKou/pseuds/LinneaKou
Summary: The bigger they are, the harder they fallYou built your fortress, I'll climb your wallsYou got your armor, I see your flawsYuri Plisetsky is a secret agent trying to claw his way up the spy hierarchy of his agency when he's given his first top secret mission. What happens on that mission will shake his loyalty to the cause and change the path of his life forever.





	1. Espionage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rayrayswimusic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayrayswimusic/gifts).



> Please see the work end notes for warnings that I didn't tag for (because of spoiler reasons)
> 
> Title from Willyecho's [_Welcome To The Fire_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLTbuvv1Lgs)
> 
> This is SUPER belated and I am so sorry for that. I hope you enjoy, Rayray.
> 
> (Prompt: Otabek and Yuri are spies from different countries and their mission is to kill each other, but when they see each other, they can't do it - like in Spy Kids 1?)

If there was one thing that Yuri hated, it was the E.R.I.S. barracks at night. The outpost he’d been assigned to was in the literal armpit of the world, and he was convinced that if he looked out a window, he’d find a polar bear staring back at him.

Back when he’d been younger, back when he’d been recruited, his trainer and mentor had fed him fantasies of exotic missions all over the world. Barcelona, Beijing, New York… and then he’d gone and screwed all of that up by being competent in a completely different field.

Viktor was the more James Bond-esque type of agent, he’d gone on all of those glamorous missions to cosmopolitan locations, infiltrated high society events and organizations, flitted from persona to persona with the kind of skill that only a chameleon possessed. Yuri had wanted that for himself, and he’d attached himself to Viktor like a fucking parasite at first.

Viktor was good at espionage. Possibly the best agent, ever.

Yuri, on the other hand, had proven to have a different affinity, and it wasn’t nearly as glamorous.

 _Infiltration_. The kind of work that required never showing his face, and sticking to the shadows. Crawling through sewers and air ducts. Waiting on the freezing rooftops, hundreds of meters off the ground, wearing a rebreather and absolute minimum cold weather gear. Hiding out in safehouses more often than not. And, of course, never being let off his fucking leash.

The only field where Yuri was even level to Viktor was the tech. The lab coat freaks happily threw all sorts of useful toys his way, because even if the infiltration class agents were the bottom rung of the organization’s ladder and therefore the most expendable, Yuri had proven himself again and again to be more than just an average infiltrator. Not that he was likely going to be… _upgraded_ in the organization. His handlers had made it clear several times that Yuri would never be anything more than an infiltrator. But, the organization would try a little harder than usual to keep him alive.

That was nice of them. _I guess._

He checked his watch, the sickly blue-green numbers making his eyes sting in the darkness of the barracks. No one else was awake; if they were, they weren’t complaining.

Idly, Yuri wondered what it would feel like to have a soft bed again, with enough blankets to keep him warm. Maybe a heated bedroom. Warm enough so that he didn’t need to sleep with his goddamn boots on. He cupped his hands to his mouth to breathe on them.

When the sun set for the last time before the long dark season, Yuri’s body clock had held out for maybe a month before time lost all meaning. He missed the sunlight, even if it didn’t make him particularly warmer. He missed the regularity of sunrise and sunset. He missed the sharpness that came with daylight.

No use dwelling on it. His watch read 0403, and he couldn’t make himself sleep at all.

He closed his eyes and tried to remember what his grandfather’s face looked like. He hadn’t been able to say goodbye, before…

It didn’t matter. _It doesn’t matter._ Yuri knew that even as good as he was, the lifespan of an E.R.I.S. agent wasn’t terribly long. At the rate that this shadow war they were all fighting was going, he would probably die before he reached twenty years old.

Funny, but he couldn’t seem to bring himself to care anymore.

He was still awake at 0600, when his usual handler let himself into the barracks. He was holding a red folder, and Yuri sat up when he saw it. A red folder meant a top-level assignment, which could mean any number of possibilities.

His handler looked annoyed, which was even more promising. It meant one of two things: either Yuri would be required to do something out of his normal skill set, or someone else was taking over handling him. It was always temporary, whatever it was, but Yuri always enjoyed being allowed to stretch his legs.

“Read it all the way through,” his handler said. “Memorize it, and then burn it.”

Yuri nodded. “Yessir.”

 

Departure was set for 1300, and Yuri spent the rest of the morning packing his gear and prepping for transit.

The deployment was for Tokyo, which would be a nice change of pace, even if it was the dead of winter. The sun still rose down there. It would be a relief from this endless night.

He’d been assigned to a team, working as the infiltration agent alongside Viktor, a hacker named Ivan - he knew the guy, a real pain in the ass - and an agent Yuri had never worked with before named, who would be handling transportation and acquisitions.

Yuri had only skimmed the itinerary for their arrival; they would rendezvous with the localized E.R.I.S. cell to hammer out support details and designate drop points, etc. Viktor was calling the shots on this mission, as the central agent. That made sense.

It was an assassination order, on the surface. Yuri wasn’t surprised at that - assassinations were one of the most difficult missions to carry out, so no wonder it was placed at such a high clearance level. He wasn’t even surprised that his first-ever red folder assignment is an assassination.

No, the biggest shock was the fact that the assassination is the _secondary_ objective.

 

_CLASSIFIED PRIORITY MISSION_

_Observe Agent Indigo [NIKIFOROV, VIKTOR] for disloyalty_

_Eliminate if he compromises the secondary mission_

_Failure to comply will result in elimination_

_Failure to conceal primary mission objective from target will result in elimination_

 

 _What the fuck is going on?_ Yuri wondered, still reeling from the true primary mission. _What did Viktor do?_

It was common knowledge that Viktor absolutely hated being on assassination missions. Viktor didn’t like killing. Yuri knew that because Viktor had told him so six years earlier, when Yuri had been recruited. Stealing from people? Fine. Indirectly causing bad things to happen to targeted individuals? Also fine. But Viktor never, _ever,_ wanted to be the one who had to pull the trigger in the end. He’d done it _once_ , when he’d been much younger and still just a promising green-folder agent. It had not been a requirement of the mission, it had been necessary, and it had been self-defense. It had given Viktor nightmares for months. He’d avoided killing ever since.

Yuri hadn’t directly killed anyone before. He’d never planted poison or explosives, but he was sure he’d contributed to plenty of deaths. This would be different, though.

They were going to kill someone. A Head of State, from the looks of it.

They were going to be murdering a world leader. And possibly innocent bystanders, if necessary.

Yuri took a deep breath in. (Well, he’d wanted to move up in the world, hadn’t he?)

But _watch Viktor for signs of disloyalty?_ What did that mean? Why was Viktor being investigated? Had he been compromised? That was always the fear, sending espionage agents into the field. They had to grift pretty hard in order to fulfill their objectives, and pretending to be someone else for weeks, months, even _years_ on end had to do something to their brains, right?

 _A good agent separates the persona from the person,_ he recalled. Viktor was a good agent.

...right?

_Not if he’s being evaluated for disloyalty._

He’d just have to swallow his unease and follow the mission objective like he always did.

_Keep it simple, get it done._

He could do this. He had to.

‘Accidents’ always could happen to infiltrators. You never knew.

 

Yuri had tossed his mission briefing into a furnace and was still working through his shock when it came time for him to head out for transport. First, the frigid truck out to the airfield. Then, the cargo transport that would fly them down, out of the polar region. They’d board an international flight in Moscow, and land in Tokyo early in the morning.

Once safely belted into the plane, Yuri couldn’t help but stare at Viktor across the cargo hold.

Viktor raised his eyebrows at Yuri. “What, do I have something on my face?”

Yuri rolled his eyes. _Vain, as usual._

Eventually, he saw Viktor nodding off in his seat. He turned his attention to the other two agents assigned to the mission, jolting when he saw that they were both watching him.

Ivan eyed the fourth agent assigned to the mission, then unlatched his harness and carefully made his way over to Yuri.

Yuri scowled at the hacker as he lowered himself into the seat next to him and leaned in. “What do _you_ want?”

“Hey, kid,” Ivan said. “You’re being kind of obvious.”

Yuri narrowed his eyes at him and didn’t answer.

Ivan grinned at him and leaned in. “Observation isn’t just watching someone and waiting for them to fuck up. Besides, there are three of us on this mission of ours. That’s better odds in our favor.”

Yuri didn’t know what to think. He held the hacker’s gaze and leaned away.

“Look,” Ivan said. “This isn’t my first time doing this. It’s easy. Stick to the secondary objective if you’re in doubt.” He patted Yuri on the shoulder. “Good luck at the big time, kid.” He got up and went back to his spot.

Yuri looked up at the last member of the team, and the grizzled man was staring right at him.

Yuri kept his face carefully blank, fought the urge to gulp, and roughly shoved his chin into his parka, choosing to lean back against the interior of the plane and try to get some shuteye before they landed.

He was going to need all the energy he could get.

 

The team stationed in Tokyo was definitely a bit livelier than what Yuri was used to, but then again he didn’t usually have contact with the local cells when he went out on assignment. He preferred to take care of himself.

Viktor, on the other hand, knew all of them from previous missions. He greeted a few agents warmly, like how Yuri imagined friendly coworkers would.

Yuri wondered if they’d gotten the same primary briefing.

_Best to assume yes._

The locals were all busy with their own assignments, but they handed over recon and building blueprints before scattering. The big guy - Evgeni, that was his name - took the keys to a beat-up old van with a cleaning company’s logo on it, and the other three piled into it.

They ended up in an empty apartment building, one that had been bought out and marked for reconstruction in the spring to make way for luxury condos. Once the van had been parked in the underground garage, Yuri picked the lock to let them into the building and Ivan disabled the security system so they could come and go as they pleased.

The existing apartments were dingy and dusty, but all that mattered was that they were marginally warmer than the barracks Yuri had been in just a mere fifteen hours earlier.

They each took a corner of the cleanest apartment for themselves and unpacked, and then Viktor pored over the recon and eventually laid out a plan of action, working through it and then eventually going over it for the rest of them.

Viktor’s plan was, at its core, incredibly simple: in less than two weeks, the Canadian embassy was hosting a celebratory gala for some reason, and their target would be attending it.

This was a hugely secure event, and Viktor had determined it would be best to poison their target. Yuri would have to sneak the poison inside to Viktor, who would have to deliver it himself. He had a cover identity that could get into the gala, with Ivan’s help on the guest list. Evgeni was in charge of procuring the supplies they needed, such as clothing and a proper getaway vehicle, and he would drive for both Viktor’s arrival and their evacuation. They would spend every waking second leading up to the gala preparing for all contingencies. Backup plans, emergency escapes, everything.

A bit more cautious now, Yuri watched Viktor whenever the older agent wasn’t looking. He didn’t _seem_ to be acting strangely… a few months earlier, Yuri had just completed another mission with Viktor, in Sochi, and that had gone off without a hitch. Viktor had been properly professional the whole time, and he wasn’t any different this time around.

Evgeni and Ivan left to get them all ramen for lunch, and Yuri was left with Viktor. The older agent disappeared into one of the other rooms, pleading exhaustion as an excuse.

Yuri waited a bit before carefully making his way down the hallway so he could press his ear to the closed door. He didn’t hear anything from inside the room, and he frowned.

Had the higher ups lost their minds? Except for some jetlag, Viktor wasn’t acting unusual at all.

Then, he realized he could hear the softest strain of music through the door. Viktor was humming to himself.

Well, that wasn’t so strange. Yuri was about to scoff to himself and go back to his prep work for his first-ever red-folder mission. If he proved himself here… the sky was the limit.

Then he stopped short when he heard Viktor’s voice, lowered as if he was trying not to be heard.

Yuri tiptoed back to the door and strained to hear, but Viktor was talking rapidly in what was probably Japanese.

 _Who would he be talking to in Japanese?_ Yuri had no idea of what he was saying, it could have been _anything_.

Eventually, Viktor fell silent, and Yuri was left staring at the closed door with a growing sense of dread in his chest.

 

The week began to pass by in a weird, stumbling sort of way. They tightened their plan.

Viktor vetoed Yuri sneaking into the gala as waiter or busboy, since the event staffing would most likely be largely comprised of locals and he would stick out among all of the Japanese workers. It wouldn’t be unheard of for a foreigner to work service for an event like this, but Viktor wanted to avoid any unnecessary attention. Fine.

Instead, Yuri found himself scouting roof entrances during the early rush hour on a frigid Tuesday morning. That was quickly discarded when he discovered armed guards patrolling perimeters in all the prime entry locations.

_Okay. New plan._

Yuri steeled himself and went to Evgeni with an idea. The creepily silent older agent was incredibly good at his assigned duties and actually entertained Yuri’s suggestion; it ended up requiring Ivan to slap a couple passable fake identities together for Yuri.

“Normally, you little guys don’t require this much investment,” the hacker said, showing off his handiwork. “You thinking of moving up from infiltration?”

“Can you even do that?” Yuri wondered, not expecting a serious answer.

“Well, not usually,” Ivan said. “But it’s possible, and you have to be something special.” He raised his eyebrows over his obnoxious green-tinted sunglasses that he wore everywhere, even when he was indoors.

Yuri didn’t know how to respond to that.

He found himself working more and more with Ivan and Evgeni, and noticed Viktor locking himself away in the room he’d claimed, or disappearing onto the roof for hours on end.

After that first night, it only took a few days of this for Yuri to reconsider everything he’d thought of Viktor up until this point. Something was actually wrong with him, something had actually changed.

 _This is why they told us from day one to not make any friends._ He understood it when it hit him that-- at this rate, Viktor was going to have to be… _terminated_. And the thought of it made him feel sick, even though he knew intellectually that Viktor was a threat to the mission; not just this one, but that of the entire organization.

He wondered if any of the other agents Viktor was friendly with were struggling with the same realization. He wondered if any of those others had been as stupid as he’d been.

Well, none of that mattered anymore.

“Look out for number one,” Ivan randomly said, just a couple of days before the gala. “Just a bit of advice, kid.”

And Yuri couldn’t help but silently agree.

 

The fact was, Yuri couldn’t justify a bigger role (and therefore a bigger grift) in the gala operation, because all he really had to do was get the poison in past all the security. It wasn’t up to him to poison the target, the Prime Minister of a small Eurasian country that had been a Soviet territory until the wall came down. After that, it had been claimed by various larger powers up until the country had claimed its independence from any foreign government and petitioned the United Nations to recognize them.

The Republic of Tonqa was fighting with all of its might to industrialize, and had begun sending athletes to the Olympics in the late 2000’s, according to Ivan. Then, one of their prominent universities managed to make a discovery that would rock the world.

A way to reprogram a living being’s cells to regenerate after injury or illness. The possibilities were endless - degenerative brain diseases, any cancer ever, regrowing entire _limbs_ and _organs_ \--

The United States wanted it, of course. And they were getting nasty in order to obtain it. They’d sent special forces in, plus countless CIA operatives, and had launched endless trade sanctions up to and including a _lawsuit_ against the entire Tonqan sovereign government.

The Prime Minister of Tonqa had put his foot down at that, publicly stating that this experimental procedure would not be proprietized and would undergo strenuous, publicly-funded testing until it was ready. He went on to say that until then, the research was going to be kept top secret, and any monetary rewards it reaped would be spread among the Tonqan people.

The Americans weren’t the only ones outraged at this, obviously. The Republic of Tonqa was essentially holding a Philosopher’s Stone hostage from the world and dangling it over everyone’s heads. From what Ivan was saying, the Prime Minister was incredibly smug about it.

_Let’s see how smug you are when we’re done with you, cretin._

Meanwhile, the Republic of Tonqa had managed to build alliances with various countries like India and Japan, and thanks to that they had some sway on the global stage. Russia had been fairly… incentivized to try and establish some kind of goodwill, but the Prime Minister was part of the last generation born under Soviet reign and had been fairly frosty towards the Russian ambassador. Alliance talks had fallen apart between Russia and Tonqa, and any patriotic Russian would probably feel a complete lack of charity towards the younger country.

Yuri didn’t care. _E.R.I.S._ was an international organization, and had been founded in the West. His loyalty to the cause superseded his national pride. It was just that this time, his country’s interests aligned with those of _E.R.I.S._

Ivan, on the other hand, couldn’t seem to stop himself from shit-talking Tonqa randomly throughout the day. It didn’t bother Yuri, he’d long learned to tune out the hacker’s constant babbling on previous missions in which they’d both taken part. Evgeni seemed to be getting to the end of his rope with Ivan, though, and apparently figured out how to shut him up after one last surveillance trip.

The day before the the gala, Viktor vanished for ‘business’ that he refused to elaborate on. Evgeni left the hideout shortly after that, and Yuri wondered if that meant that Viktor was about to be… taken care of. Would the whole mission to poison the Prime Minister of Tonqa even happen? Was it just a farce to take out Viktor?

But then Evgeni returned a few hours later, looking displeased, right before Viktor himself walked back in. Yuri wanted to ask, but when Ivan tried, Evgeni shut him up.

It looked like they were still on, then. Fine. Yuri was still ready to go.

It was time for him to do what he did best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone is the age they were at the start of the YOI canon. (i.e. Yuri is 14, Viktor is 26)


	2. Retaliation

The day of the gala dawned, and Yuri was in a panic. He was going to be sneaking the poison for the prime minister into the building under the guise of a hired hand for the musical performers. The performers had been carefully vetted, since they’d be present at the gala, but the setup for the performers would be outsourced. That was kind of stupid of the organizers, considering how Ivan had managed to get Yuri employed as a temp for the company. They’d targeted this specific company because it had been desperately struggling to retain enough employees during the frenzy of the job, and apparently the working conditions were shit. Yuri didn’t care, he wouldn’t even be working an entire night.

At least, that’s what he had planned only if he could find the fucking vial of poison!

“I swear, it was on this table the whole week we’ve been here,” he snapped at Ivan, who had more or less torn apart the van in his own search for the vial.

“You didn’t move it?” Viktor asked, standing in the middle of the room with his arms crossed. “Did any of you?”

Ivan shook his head, and Evgeni glared.

Viktor raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “I’m meant to be getting ready for the pre-game, goddammit. I can’t maintain my cover if I beg off, this persona is of a heavy drinker.”

“Search harder,” Evgeni said, bluntly. Ivan groaned and turned to head back down to the van. Yuri ducked into the hallway, shining a flashlight along the corners where the walls met the shoddy carpeting. He poked his head into the bathroom and had a sudden idea.

“Mother _fucker_ ,” he said when he opened the medicine cabinet and came face-to-face with the missing vial. “Who the fuck put it in here?!”

“You found it?” Viktor sounded relieved from down the hall. “Fantastic, can we get on with this? I need to get ready.”

Yuri glared at him and pocketed the vial. Viktor was a fantastic liar, if you didn’t know his tells.

Was he _trying_ to throw the mission?

_What went wrong with you?!_

Evgeni threw Yuri his disguise, and Viktor disappeared to get dressed himself.

The older agent shot Yuri an unreadable look, but Yuri caught the _now do you see?_

Yuri sighed and locked himself into the bathroom to change.

 

When Evgeni dropped Yuri off at the Canadian embassy, it was child’s play to join the swarm of techs and stagehands who were mobbing the back door of the building like ants. There were tons of security guards, men in off-the-rack black suits that made them look even _more_ obvious, and Yuri kept his head down as he allowed himself to be loaded down with equipment to be taken into the banquet hall.

One of the important things about blending in with the help was actually doing the goddamn job, which Yuri was willing and able to do. He followed the barked orders of whoever was overseeing his particular bunch of workers and tried to set up the stuff as competently as he could. Then, he was chased back outside to help with instruments.

Once he’d delivered the half-dozen drums that he’d been transporting, he managed to grab a small duffel bag that no one had noticed him bringing in from the truck, and then he fled into the service bathroom. The temp uniform was discarded, giving way to a blue-black stealth suit. He threw the used uniform into the unattended trash compactor and shoved his hair under a black skullcap.

Then, he threw his equipment bag into the vents and climbed in after it.

The nice thing about older buildings was that the ventilation shafts were usually larger than literal rat-sized, so while it may have been a tighter fit, Yuri was still able to maneuver better than, say, Viktor or Ivan. That was why he had been designated as infiltration, after all. His small frame could fit almost anywhere.

At least, for now. If he was remembering what his father had looked like correctly, he’d be hitting a growth spurt soon enough.

Maybe now would be a good time to learn hacking, or how to drive a getaway car. His infiltration days could be ending sooner than he’d planned.

He managed to make his way across the building to the west-side public men’s restrooms, where they’d all agreed made the best spot to drop the poison for Viktor to pick up. A quick check in the hallway confirmed his location.

Evgeni had dropped Yuri off shortly before nightfall. The gala would be underway very soon, judging by the sounds of the live band warming up. Yuri watched as frenzied waitstaff and embassy workers ran up and down the hallways outside of the bathrooms, screaming at each other in various languages. Nothing to do but wait.

Then, trouble.

“Check the vents,” he heard someone say in curt Russian. “Word is, some people are using kids to infiltrate these things.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” a woman said, in disbelief. “Kids? Who would drag kids into this?”

“E.R.I.S. drafts them as young as eight years old,” the first speaker said.

Yuri’s blood ran cold.

“You’ve _got_ to be kidding me,” the woman said.

“I wish I were.”

“Ugh. Okay, I’ll see what we can do to secure the fucking vents from some evil spy kids.” The woman sighed. “Unbelievable.”

Yuri began to move. He didn’t hurry, he kept his movements slow and careful, but he _moved_. He’d already gotten the vent opening for the men’s room undone, and he pushed himself out into the bathroom.

“Goddammit,” he growled, closing up the vent and locking himself into a stall. He took a deep breath and held it, waiting for a telltale sound of _some_ sort of investigating from outside.

Sure enough, he heard clanking from the recently vacated vent, and he exhaled. There went one of his exit strategies. With any luck, they would be putting some kind of surveillance in the vents after checking them. Probably some motion sensors, or something.

Time for Plan B.

Viktor had vetoed the uniformed waiter plan, but Yuri no longer trusted anything he said. He pulled his backup disguise out of the gear bag that he’d packed.

The stealth suit went back into the bag, along with the smaller tools he’d used to get the vent open. The white dress shirt, black trousers, and cumberbund were still vaccuum-sealed to remain wrinkle-free, and when he popped the bags open there was a satisfying hiss as they reinflated. Yuri quickly dressed in the waitstaff outfit and switched out his climbing boots for the slip-safe server shoes. Then, his bright blond hair went up under a wig cap so he could secure a dark wig onto his head. It wouldn’t be perfect, but as long as he kept the fringe over his forehead, no one would notice how his eyebrows didn’t match his hair.

He stuffed his gear into the trash can and was just checking his cumberbund in the mirror when someone shoved the door open.

The guy who walked in, wearing an ill-fitting suit that Yuri immediately identified as one of the members of the security team. He didn’t look Japanese, though. Probably one of the foreign team members. He met Yuri’s gaze and froze.

Yuri fought the urge to sneer and jerked his cumberbund straight, the weight of the poison vial bumping against his thigh. “Sorry,” he muttered in English, and pushed past the security guy.

The guy caught Yuri by the arm. “What are you doing in here?”

“Taking a piss?” Yuri quipped, yanking out of his grasp.

The guy regarded him suspiciously, and Yuri glared back at him.

“Look,” he said, not bothering to attempt civility. “I’m thousands of kilometers away from home, working for a stupid rich people event. If I need to take a piss, I’m gonna take a piss.”

The guy raised his hands in surrender and let Yuri storm off.

Now to find Viktor.

 

An hour into the event, and Viktor was nowhere to be found.

Yuri had been loaded down with countless platters of drinks and finger food, been yelled at by the random-ass French chef in the kitchen for trying to disappear, and nearly been spilled on by a mostly-drunk lady who didn’t appear to even notice him. He didn’t dare let loose the endless stream of curses and swearing that had taken over his thoughts process, even though he was sure that his anger was visible on his face. People were avoiding him at this point.

At this rate, he’d have to poison the prime minister himself.

“Oh, sorry,” said the guy he’d bumped into. He frowned and looked Yuri over from behind his thick glasses. His English was lightly accented the way that the other Japanese embassy workers’ speech tended to be. On first assessment, he couldn’t be all that high up in anything - his suit was boring, ill-fitting, and poorly-pressed; he was wearing an ugly blue tie, and he seemed uncomfortable. “I’ve never seen you here before.”

“Temp,” Yuri said, narrowing his eyes.

“Your customer service skills are awful,” the Japanese guy said, making a face. “No offense, but if you don’t want to get fired-- or, actually, if you want to keep working--”

“Whatever,” Yuri said, spinning on his heel and stalking away with his empty tray.

He wished for the eighth time that night that Viktor hadn’t written the comms off as being too potentially dangerous, but the amount of security with obvious earpieces meant interference, and there was almost certainly a digital signal-monitoring team stationed on the premises. _Stupid diplomats,_ he thought. _Why do we have to wait for these dumbasses to come out into the public to knock them off?_

 _“Because they’d only allow vetted personnel into their secured private rooms,”_ Viktor had said. _“That’s pretty much the only reason why a lot of high-profile assassinations have to take place in public. Private quarters are too difficult to get into.”_

Well, that was _dumb as hell_. It made sense, of course - considering that Yuri was considering spiking an entire tray of drinks with the poison vial in his pocket and swinging by the Prime Minister of Tonqa to just get the mission over with - but it was a pain in the ass. _Fuck._

“Yuri.”

 _Finally_. Yuri spotted Viktor lurking far away from the action, practically one foot out of the banquet hall. When Yuri made his way over, Viktor took hold of his arm and dragged him into the hallway.

“ _Augh--_ Viktor, what the fu--”

“The mission’s scrubbed,” Viktor said, looking into Yuri’s eyes. “That poison we were supplied? It’s fake. This was a setup.”

Yuri wrenched his arm from Viktor’s grasp. “Won’t know unless we try it,” he said, digging the vial out of his pocket and thrusting it at the older spy.

Viktor lashed out, knocking the vial out of his hand and sending it careening down the hallway.

“What the actual fuck is wrong with you?!” Yuri hissed. “I can’t believe I considered trying to keep you alive!”

Viktor went pale and stared at him. “So you knew. You knew that Evgeni is supposed to kill me.”

“You were being given a chance,” Yuri said, keeping his voice low. “Prove your loyalty to the mission and do your duty.”

“Yuri, this isn’t what you think it is--”

“Clearly,” Yuri said, backing away from him. His emergency exit strategy was through the kitchen, and that was on the other side of the hall. Viktor was a lost cause, and Evgeni would probably be carrying out his secret orders soon.

“I thought there was something odd about you.”

Yuri froze, and slowly turned around as Viktor went even paler. He recognized the newcomer’s voice.

The Japanese guy from earlier had slicked back his hair and gotten rid of his glasses and suit jacket, revealing a concealed sidearm that Yuri hadn’t even thought to check for. No wonder the suit was so poorly fitted. The sidearm was drawn and pointed right at him. “E.R.I.S. agents, I presume?” the security guard said, his accent completely gone.

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Yuri said, hoping the guy hadn’t heard him telling Viktor to stick to the mission.

“I’m sure you don’t,” the Japanese guy said. He looked up at Viktor. “Nice cover identity,” he added, not moving his gun at all. “Russian oligarchs are a dime a dozen at this embassy.”

Yuri heard Viktor audibly gulp behind him.

“Both of you need to come with me so we can clear you… or not,” the Japanese guy said, jerking his head towards the hallway branching off to his right. It was some kind of service hallway, and Yuri did _not_ want to even think about doing as he was told.

“What if I tell you no?” Viktor asked, his voice rough. Yuri was shocked, usually Viktor was able to charm his way out of _any_ dangerous situation.

“It wasn’t a request,” the guard said.

Viktor took a deep breath, and then Yuri heard the sound of his suit rustling. He saw the gun’s muzzle move, and the flash of the discharge.

_BANG! BANG!_

He flinched, but didn’t feel any pain. His ears were ringing, and the guard was talking loudly into an earpiece, but he couldn’t make out the words.

Yuri chanced a look over his shoulder and his blood ran cold.

Viktor had only made it a few paces away towards the exit, and had collapsed in the middle of the hallway. Yuri could see a growing red stain on the back of his pale suit.

Yuri felt his throat seize up and his breathing quicken, his head spinning.

“On your knees,” the guard said, jerking Yuri’s arms behind his back and securing his hands with zipties. Yuri knew how to get out of them, but that knowledge was being drowned out by the voice in his head screaming _Viktor’s dead, Viktor’s dead, Viktor’s dead…_

 

After the Japanese guard had discharged his weapon, emergency protocol had been kicked into motion. The guests had been escorted to a safe place and surrounded by enough security to choke a titan, and the embassy’s remaining guards were sweeping the building while the police were arriving.

Yuri had been brought to the security office and tossed in an interrogation room, judging by the looks of it. Only two people were present, a tall old guy who was definitely in charge of the whole operation, and a younger woman with bright red hair.

“Listen, young man,” said the head of embassy security. “Be straight with us, this is already not looking good for you.”

“I told you,” Yuri snapped, arms still twisted behind his back. “I knew him from my own country, he’s a creepy old rich dude from oil money.”

“He _was_ ,” said the female guard, making a face.

Yuri gulped.

“And why was he trying to talk to you?” the head of security demanded, shooting the female guard a dirty look.

Yuri shrugged. “He wanted to pay me,” he fibbed, trying to construct a reasonable story. There were plenty of stories of corrupt European oligarchs for him to draw from. “He wanted to know about the proprietary medical technology from the Republic of Tonqa.”

“Corporate espionage?” the female guard wondered.

“For the love of god, stop talking,” the head of security snapped at her.

Yuri‘s teeth were chattering. “I swear, I was just here to work,” he insisted. “For fuck’s sake, I’m a temp!”

“He checks out.”

They all glanced up at the guard who’d entered the room, bearing a tablet. “Vitaly Smirnov, Russian national on a temporary worker’s visa,” he said.

Yuri blinked at the newcomer, who he recognized as the guard who’d walked in on him in the bathroom.

“Jesus Christ,” said the head of security. “Okay, fine. We have his statement. Altin, get the ties off him and walk him out of the building. No stopping for anything. If you left something behind, give up on it.”

“Fine,” Yuri said as the guard drew a small knife from his pocket and sliced the ziptie open.

The guard hauled him to his feet and marched him out of the security office. The way to freedom ended up being a long, twisting maze of nondescript hallways. Yuri was practically herded the whole way, prodded along by the silent guard.

“Do you have a ride home?” the guard asked as he opened the employee entrance and led Yuri out.

“This is Japan,” Yuri said, itching to run away. “I can take public transit.”

“Fine. Be safe,” the guard said, his expression not changing.

Yuri laughed harshly at that and set out towards the street, scuffing his shoes on the pavement. He heard the door slam shut and glanced behind him, but the guard had gone back inside.

Yuri let out a shaky sigh, and activated the electronic burst signal that would tell Evgeni that it was time for pickup.

 

Thirty-six hours later, Yuri was in the office of the Hollow Man, the agent who ran the division, recounting the events of the night of the gala. Evgeni and Ivan backed him up with their own testimony, and Ivan even had police scanner proof of a gun being discharged in the embassy building, plus transport of a body to the coroner.

The man who ran this division was known only by his codename. He wore a mask over the bottom part of his face, and sunglasses over his eyes. Yuri had never been in the same room as the Hollow Man before, only speaking to him via telecom monitor. Now, he felt like he’d been thrown in a cage with a ravenous tiger.

“So Agent Indigo is dead,” the Hollow Man said, his tone not giving anything away. “Well, as long as the rest of you were not compromised, I suppose it does not matter. The mission is technically complete.”

 _But what about the secondary objective?_ Yuri wondered, keeping his expression bland.

“Sadly, the Prime Minister of Tonqa will not be surviving the week.” The masked agent leaned back in his chair and sighed. “After all, emergency evacuations on such short notice can go so horribly wrong, no matter how much your team plans…”

Behind him, a television flickered on. The image of a helicopter crash appeared on the screen, bordered by Japanese ticker tape.

“Tragic,” the Hollow Man said. “Unfortunate. It looks like the Republic of Tonga will be undergoing emergency elections soon.”

Ivan smirked and Evgeni huffed. Yuri felt strangely numb. _Had_ the poison been fake? Had Viktor himself switched it out?

Did it matter?

“It looks like our espionage team has a new opening,” the Hollow Man said, and Yuri went very still. “Considering you are beginning to outgrow your role in infiltration, I think it is time we moved you up in the organization. We will, after all, need a new Agent Indigo now.”

Yuri could hardly believe what he was hearing. Not even ten minutes later, he was walking back to the lower-level barracks to pack up his meager possessions so he could be moved into the belowground facility, where the real spy academy was based.

“Hey, kid.”

Yuri looked up from packing his bag, watching Evgeni shoulder his way into the cramped barracks.

“Congratulations,” Evgeni said, raising his eyebrows. “My missions on this trip were to eliminate the previous Agent Indigo and evaluate you as his replacement. You rose to the challenge, even if you were a bit sloppy and unrefined. I will be taking over as your trainer and handler for the foreseeable future.”

“You talk,” Yuri said, a little shocked.

Evgeni chuckled and shook his head. “When I need to.” He saluted, and left Yuri to his packing.

Yuri looked down at his hands. They were shaking.

He collapsed onto the rickety, uncomfortable bunk one last time and tried to suppress the sob welling up in his chest.

He thought he was tougher than this. Tougher than _Viktor_. Wasn’t he?

He’d have to be. He’d seen how easily Viktor had been taken down. He’d _seen_ how little the Hollow Man had cared about one of his top agents being killed.

He couldn’t afford to stay this weak. He _couldn’t_.

He didn’t _want_ to die.


	3. Infiltration

It had been years since that fateful gala in Tokyo, and Yuri had been back in the city a few times since then, but not in another formal banquet situation like this. He’d been a child when Viktor had been killed right in front of him, but now he was grown. He was much taller, his cornsilk hair swept back neatly in a small bun at the nape of his neck, and he was nursing a glass of champagne that had gone flat long before the waitstaff had poured it out.

It wasn’t the same embassy as That Night, but it felt the same. The incident, especially the fact that a gun had been fired, had resulted in even tighter security, so this outing had been over a year and a half in the making. The hacker assigned to this mission, a teenage girl who had given a fucking _screen name_ as her only identifier, sighed into her mic and caused static in the earbud hidden in his ear. “God, I’m so bored.”

“Don’t start,” Evgeni said, his voice flat. “If you distract Agent Indigo on this mission, I will make sure you never leave Siberia again.”

Yuri fought down a shudder as the hacker fell silent. He glanced out at the other attendees and picked out his mission support, disguised as waiters flitting among the moneyed socialites.

After several dozen outings in this identity Yuri had gotten his fill of rich people as a whole, no matter the country. He’d gone out of his way to establish his persona as being extremely stoic and silent, so he didn’t have to interact with these empty-headed oligarchs quite so intimately. It was a testament to Evgeni’s training that Yuri was able to keep an expressionless face when someone inevitably ignored his ‘leave me alone’ aura and started chattering at him.

That night, however, no one had done that. It was something of a relief - he’d take any little advantages he could get - which meant he could focus on spotting the target and making contact. His persona was that of bored rich business heir with a gambling problem, which they would be using to hook and trap the political activist from Kazakhstan that they were after. The man in question hadn’t arrived to the event yet, so Yuri was mentally running through known contacts in the crowd and rehearsing his cover stories should any of them approach him.

“Oops,” someone said, and then his shoulder and chest were drenched with a strong-smelling red wine. “Oh, _kuso_ , I’m so sorry--”

Yuri groaned internally and pulled away from the Japanese man who had stumbled into him, but that proved more difficult than he’d anticipated. The man was stumbling and clearly way past tipsy, and he clung to Yuri’s shoulder like it was an anchor in a typhoon. “Fuck, I’m so sorry,” the man slurred, a combination of the booze and his heavy accent. “Fuck, let me--”

“Don’t worry about it,” Yuri snapped, pushing the Japanese man away. He was about to try and make an exit when he got a look at the man’s face and froze.

The secret agent who had killed Viktor had put on glasses again, but there were no mistaking those eyes. Most likely artificially reddened, probably using eye drops. Same for the rest of the flush. He was wearing a nicer suit, probably grifting the same way Yuri was.

“I’ll get this cleaned up myself,” Yuri finally managed to choke out, shoving his half-empty flute of champagne at a passing server and fleeing.

“We’ve been had,” he said into his earpiece. “The enemy is here and has made contact, I’m scrubbing this mission.”

“Agent Indigo, you _can’t_ scrub this mission,” Evgeni shouted from the command center. “It took us too long to set up!”

“I’ve been made,” Yuri snapped. “I’m not going to listen this time, sir. The man who killed Viktor is here and he’s marked me.”

“Fuck,” said the hacker girl. “The guy that killed the last Agent Indigo?”

“Fine, the mission is called,” Evgeni said, and Yuri vaguely heard the other agents responding. “Meet at the rally point and prepare for extraction. Do _not_ get sidetracked. Let’s go.”

Yuri didn’t need to be told twice. He pushed his way into the kitchen and made for the alleyway entrance, grumbling and trying to calm his racing heart.

He burst out into the alley alone; there seemingly weren’t even workers on smoking breaks to observe him shedding the suit jacket and dress shirt. He tossed the soiled clothes into the nearby dumpster, half tempted to pull off the undershirt that was sticking to him where the wine had bled through.

“Waste of a perfectly good suit,” an unfamiliar voice said, making Yuri’s blood run cold.

He forced himself to act casual. “I can always buy another,” he said, thickening his accent. “Red wine stains are impossible to fully remove.”

“Blood is definitely harder,” the other man said, and Yuri finally got a look at the speaker. His evening went from bad to worse.

_We’ve made such a huge mistake,_ he thought as the mission target stepped into the single pool of illumination that the alleyway offered. He didn’t even dare attempt to alert Evgeni and the others, his mind was racing as he tried to come up with a plausible set of lies that could get him out of this situation.

The Kazakh activist had a firearm trained on him, and his expression was level. His eyebrows went up a smidge. “Well,” he said. “They told me E.R.I.S. liked to get them young.”

Yuri had a taser-stinger that he could use to get away, providing that he was able to distract the enemy agent long enough to draw it and deploy it. (Evgeni had nixed any chance of Yuri getting his own firearm, not wanting traceable evidence on this mission. Recent gun legislation that had been adopted by several countries - including Japan - made it difficult to obtain clean weapons that couldn’t be traced to sellers and manufacturers. This agent was almost certainly with an internationally sanctioned organization.)

“You still have the eyes of a soldier,” the enemy agent said, lowering his gun.

Yuri blinked in surprise. “What?”

“All those years ago, at the Canadian embassy,” the Kazakh man said. “In the bathroom. We found your gear bag in the trash.”

_Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit--_

The other agent holstered his gun and jerked his thumb towards the alleyway exit. “Go. Behave yourself,” he said in a low voice. “I’ll be seeing you again, Yuri Plisetsky.”

_What the FUCK--_

“Yuri, you’re not moving. What happened?”

The Kazakh agent’s eyes flicked to Yuri’s ear, where the earpiece was. Yuri didn’t move.

“Go get washed up,” the agent said, a little louder. “You look like a wet cat.”

Yuri snapped out of his shock and glared at the enemy agent. “Go fuck yourself.”

“No thanks,” the agent said, raising his eyebrows. He brushed past Yuri and let himself back into the kitchen.

“Nothing happened,” Yuri said as soon as he was certain he was alone this time. “Ran into another… guest. I’m on my way.”

He didn’t dare mention that the target they were hunting was part of… whoever their opposition was. And he didn’t _dare_ even think about how the enemy agent knew his real name.

 

Yuri had gotten used to the countless in-person debriefings with the Hollow Man when he’d first ascended to the new Agent Indigo, and then the Hollow Man had been replaced by a masked woman who was referred to by the callsign Lady Steel. (Yuri had no idea of whether the Hollow Man had been replaced willingly or not. He was starting to see the cutthroat internal workings of E.R.I.S. now that he was past working as simple infiltration.)

“This mission was not even completed,” Lady Steel said at the debriefing that was called as soon as Yuri’s team landed back at the base. “Care to tell me why, Agent Indigo?”

“I made contact with an enemy agent,” Yuri said, trying to sound confident. “He marked me and attempted to bring me to a secondary location, and I recognized him as the one who killed my predecessor. I suspected we had been compromised before we’d even entered the gala, possibly before we even set foot in the country.”

“That’s quite an assumption to make,” Lady Steel said. “Where is your evidence?”

“It was an instinct,” Yuri said. He didn’t bring up the Kazakh agent.

“If the agent recognized you from several years ago, then you may be useless for espionage work,” Lady Steel said, and Yuri’s blood ran cold. “We may have to retire you.”

“I was mostly barefaced,” Yuri said quickly. “No wig, very little makeup, no prosthetics. I can burn this persona and build another with more disguise built into it. Grow out my hair, maybe facial hair. It might age me a little, too.”

Lady Steel’s eyebrows went up. “You don’t want to be retired, Agent Indigo?”

Yuri swallowed. “No, ma’am.” He’d seen too much to be merely ‘retired.’ At this stage in his career, he would most likely have an unfortunate accident, like the hacker Ivan had the previous year.

_If everyone knew that these guys know my name, they’d kill me off for sure._

“I still have so much to offer the cause,” he went on, affecting more confidence. “My work isn’t done.”

“Fine,” Lady Steel said. “You get one more chance to recover this assignment. The cover identity team will build another persona for you to replace your burned one. Start working with Intelligence to salvage your target.”

_Fuck._ Yuri’s throat went dry at running into the Kazakh agent again. Then, an idea sprang into his head.

If he had a hand in planning the next approach, he could easily set it up to… ‘fail.’ Targets died all the time in this game. One less enemy agent in the world couldn’t be that huge of a loss, right? It would certainly send a sign to the other side.

He could clean up this mess. He might even figure out how to take out that damned Japanese agent, too.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said, saluting. Behind him, he heard Evgeni exit the office.

“Dismissed,” Lady Steel said, and Yuri hurried to follow after his handler.

 

Back before Ivan had been ‘retired,’ Yuri had managed to pick up a few hacking tricks from him. He borrowed a workstation in the Intelligence base and went to work.

First, he tried to probe the Kazakh agent’s identity, but the alias was rock-solid. He must have been cultivating it for _years_ , possibly even before Yuri had run into the guy at the Canadian embassy. Yuri couldn’t find any threads to pull on the man, so he focused on how to take the guy out. By the time the disguise geeks had come up with a new persona for him, he had four solid plans formulated, easily reworked to fit whatever his new cover identity turned out to be.

A Russian athlete had _not_ been what he was expecting, but he wasn’t about to complain. He would assume the identity of a retired figure skater who had never managed to qualify for higher competitions and was now searching for opportunities beyond the nation’s borders. He would have to wear a wig and prosthetic facial hair, plus a fake nose and chin, and he’d have to bulk up. He was given three months to totally transform his build. One of the agents who had built the persona suggested he even learn how to figure skate, just to sell the bit.

Yuri had been trained in ballet as a child, so that was where he started. He was given permission to take leave and head down to Moscow for what basically amounted to figure skating bootcamp, using one of his weaker cover identities for the trip. It would be burned as soon as he returned to the base.

So, he went to Moscow.

 

Once he landed in capital and secured his living quarters in a local hostel, he decided to try and re-familiarize himself with the city in which he’d started out his life. Turned out, there wasn’t much that remained familiar to him. Buildings had been torn down or replaced, the public transit system had been overhauled and modernized, streets had been reconfigured, and new ordinances had been put in place. The people flowed down the sidewalks differently. The rhythm had changed.

It was unnerving.

Yuri was still determined to seek out one thing, though. Well, really, one person.

He started by checking local listings of his old neighborhood, searching for one Nikolai Plisetsky. He wouldn’t make contact, he just wanted a _look_.

Well, it turned out that the apartment building that he’d grown up in with his grandfather was long gone, demolished the very year that Yuri had been promoted to Agent Indigo. After a few days of searching for his grandfather in between ballet and ice skating lessons, he was forced to give up on finding his last remaining family member to focus on his real goal.

The three months of leave passed at an agonizing crawl. Yuri steadily gained muscle mass, and even had a surprise growth spurt at one point. When Evgeni showed up to make contact and check on him, Yuri was deemed ready to assume the cover identity. He cancelled his lessons with the instructors and ended his stay at the hostel, leaving Moscow that night.

 

It was another month before Yuri was sent back out into the field, this time with a shoestring support team backing him. Evgeni was watching him like a hawk, and by now Yuri knew exactly what that meant.

_This is what Viktor had felt like, before--_

Yuri stuck to the mission parameters, though - he hadn’t been compromised at all. No one had approached him yet--

Well--

It didn’t matter. Yuri was loyal to E.R.I.S. He had no other choice. It was either the cause or death. No amount of sly secret agents from the enemy’s side could change that for him.

Except, on the second day of his mission in Almaty, Yuri was made _again_.

He’d discovered, while he was training in Moscow, that he really liked the act of figure skating. There was something lovely about the grace that he had picked up from gliding across the ice. He even had attempted a few jumps, but rarely landed any. Maybe in another life, he could have been a great skater.

Not in this life, though. And he actually felt disappointed at that.

He found himself at the largest rink in the city, where the national champions were currently training for the next season. He was just there to scope it out, he wouldn’t even be getting on the ice - he hadn’t been allowed to purchase skates of his own for the mission, which kind of sucked - but he was kind of itching to. It was weird, to have something he was actually interested in that didn’t have anything to do with espionage.

He was in his full disguise, prosthetics and wig included, and he was wearing athletic-wear. He should have been unrecognizable.

So he practically screamed when that Kazakh agent showed up at the rink and immediately zeroed in on him. Well, not practically. He kept the screaming internal.

The other agent didn’t even miss a beat. Yuri forced himself to act calm and casual as the agent made his way around the ice and came to a stop next to him.

“Are you still on assignment to make contact with me?”

Yuri didn’t answer. He was seething.

The Kazakh agent sighed and looked out at the rink. “Interesting alias you’ve got, there.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Yuri said stiffly.

“You know, I used to skate.”

Yuri blinked and tried hard not to physically react. “You don’t anymore?”

The agent laughed. “Had to give it up after my parents died and left my family in financial crisis. My siblings and I were separated and I was sent to another town. And you probably know how it goes, right?”

Yuri didn’t respond.

“You probably know the pitch, the whole ‘serve a cause greater than country’ speech, right?” The Kazakh agent looked at him. “I heard it, too.”

Yuri finally met the other man’s eyes. He still couldn’t speak.

“The difference is, the other guys got to me before E.R.I.S. could finish the job.” The agent sighed again. “They have an uncanny way of picking out the vulnerable ones, don’t they? I’m willing to bet they offered to help your family right?”

“What are you saying?” Yuri said. His mouth was starting to run dry.

“Your grandfather left Moscow years ago,” the agent said. “He’s in Saint Petersburg now, still searching for you. He hasn’t given up yet.”

Yuri felt his eyes beginning to sting. “Why in the world should I believe you?”

The agent handed him a USB stick and patted his arm. “E.R.I.S. lies, Yuri.” Then, he turned on his heel and walked away.

 

Yuri ended up ducking into a cyber cafe a few streets over to check in with Evgeni before he decided to plug the USB stick into one of the public computers. If it was meant for his personal hardware, the enemy would be disappointed.

There was only one file on the drive, a video. Yuri plugged in some headphones and opened the video up.

The bottom of his stomach dropped out when he recognized the face of the man on his screen. _Grandpa--_

“Yurachka,” his grandfather said, his voice rough and weary. “Yurachka, please come back to me. _Please_. You’re all I have left in this world.”

“Please, Kolya,” a voice said from off-screen, and Yuri frowned. The voice was familiar, but he couldn’t place it. “Tell him what you’ve told us.”

“What, that I’ve received _nothing_ from these E.R.I.S. people?” Yuri’s grandfather laughed harshly, twisting his old hat in his hands. “That the only thing they did for me was steal my grandson away? How do I even know he’s still alive?” he added, shooting a poisonous look to whoever was off-camera.

“Because I’ve been on missions with him,” said the familiar voice, and Yuri got the shock of his _life_ when Viktor Nikiforov’s head appeared in the video frame. His silver hair was longer and his face had more lines etched into the skin, but it was definitely him. “And I want to bring him home, Kolya.”

Grandpa laughed. “You could be telling me what I want to hear just so that I take part in whatever sick joke you people are pulling.”

“I promise he’ll see this video, Mr. Plisetsky,” said the voice of the Kazakh agent. “He’s in Moscow now, searching for you.”

Grandpa made a wounded noise and looked away, staring off to his right. “God, please,” he said softly. “All I want is my grandson back.”

“I will do whatever I can to bring him to you,” the Kazakh agent promised.

Yuri released the sob he’d been holding in as the video ended. His burner phone buzzed with a message from Evgeni, but he didn’t bother checking it.

_E.R.I.S. lies, Yuri_.

 

It took every ounce of his acting skills to compose himself before heading back to the safehouse where the rest of the team was based.

He would have to play things very carefully from then on. After all, when Viktor had been compromised, they’d noticed right away.

Maybe because Viktor wasn’t as good of a grifter as Yuri had thought. Or maybe because Viktor had gotten tired of pretending to care anymore.

Either way, nothing made sense. Viktor wasn’t dead? His grandfather had been left destitute? _Those people_ had gotten to Grandpa first? How did Yuri know that he wasn’t being coerced? How did he know that Grandpa had said all those things willingly?

He could play this game, too.

The Kazakh agent had leaned heavily on an emotional play, and Yuri was making a rookie mistake. He couldn’t allow himself to be distracted.

He couldn’t allow them to turn him on E.R.I.S.

...At least, not yet.

Evgeni was waiting when Yuri walked in, already stripping off the wig and facial prosthetics. “Where the hell were you, Yuri?”

“Establishing my persona,” Yuri said, making a face. “He’s supposed to be sleazy, right? Also, congrats, you are now a scorned girlfriend.”

Evgeni glared at him. “Not appreciated. Anyway. We’ve received news from Intelligence. The mission has changed.”

Yuri did not allow himself to react. “What news?”

“The target that you’re attempting to make contact with is not who he appears to be. Intel was able to spot a discrepancy, and everything fell apart.” Evgeni handed Yuri another red folder, and Yuri’s blood ran cold.

“You aren’t going to be trapping this man after all,” Evgeni said. “New goal: take him out. He’s part of the enemy organization.”

Yuri flipped the dossier open and scanned it.

_ALTIN, Otabek_ , the file read. Kazakh citizen, recruited by a foreign agency at conscription age. Five years of successful missions run, starting with his involvement in the Tokyo embassy incident.

“He was part of the team sent to take out the last Agent Indigo,” he said. “What are the odds that he’s working with the Japanese agent?”

“Very good, so your instincts in Japan were spot-on.” Evgeni crossed his arms. “Your new identity will not be useful in this mission, so consider it shelved for now. Our extraction has been moved up to tomorrow morning at 0400. We’re returning to base.”

“We haven’t even unpacked,” whined the hacker girl, and one of the support agents threw something at her to shut her up.

Yuri nodded. “This all makes some sense,” he said. “What should I do if I come into contact with Altin outside of mission parameters?”

“Do what you must,” Evgeni said. “Whoever set up his cover identity did very well. We were lucky to find the crack in his mask.”

_Luck has nothing to do with it_ , Yuri thought, looking back at his dossier. “Well, I’d better brush up on my aim,” he said. It had been a while since he’d fired a gun.

“I think you’d be better off with an indirect method,” Evgeni said.

Yuri raised his eyebrows. “Poison?” he asked in a dry tone.

“Not quite,” Evgeni rolled his eyes. “We don’t deal in irony, Agent Indigo.”

Yuri shrugged it off and escaped into his private sleeping room to look over the red folder in more depth.

Either the enemy agent had done exquisite work preparing a secondary cover identity, or he hadn’t been lying. The dossier on Otabek Altin revealed a childhood backstory that matched the one the agent had given him at the rink. Orphaned at age eight, separated from his older brother and younger sister when the sister was taken in by local relatives and the brother joined the military, leaving him to be sent out to the countryside to live with more distant relations. There was even a note about E.R.I.S. approaching him in an attempt to seed him for recruitment. That just made the case for it being true even _stronger_.

Altin had disappeared after E.R.I.S. had made first contact, sent elsewhere for education. It didn’t make sense unless you knew he had been recruited by someone else entirely.

Yuri breathed out a deep sigh. He’d thrown the USB stick with the video of his grandfather on it down a sewer grate, and had been tempted to just keep walking past the safehouse once he’d arrived at the nearest intersection. Nothing was clear anymore, and he was getting tired.

He’d go back to Siberia, back to the base, and work on a new plan. But first, he had to decide what the truth really was.

And then, he had to decide if he really wanted to know the truth.


	4. Sabotage

Yuri didn’t look up from his phone when the person he was waiting for finally sat down in the cafe chair behind him. “You’re late.”

“Forgive me,” Otabek said. When Yuri finally glanced at him, he was surprised to see quite a bit of facial hair grown in on the other agent’s face. “I had to escape your handlers.”

“They’re starting to get suspicious,” Yuri said, taking a sip of his coffee. “I can tell. Evgeni is getting kind of distant, and my missions are starting to get downgraded.”

“It may be time to extract you,” Otabek said.

Yuri sighed. “Is it going to be as messy as Viktor’s?”

Otabek laughed softly and reached over to pat his shoulder. “Hopefully not.”

It had been almost a year since Otabek had given him the stick drive in Almaty and shaken what little faith Yuri had left in E.R.I.S. Thanks to repeated clandestine meetings over that year, Yuri had gotten an idea of what to look for to confirm his deep-seated suspicions that he’d been ignoring for quite a while now.

E.R.I.S. had claimed, over a decade ago while recruiting Yuri, that they were agents for peace. They were anything but. It hadn’t taken all too much digging to discover that the entire organization had started out as an operation from the American CIA before the U.S. let them loose, claiming the agency went rogue. Problem was, the CIA certainly benefited from E.R.I.S. doing things like starting coups and assassinating world leaders.

Like the Prime Minister of Tonqa. The smaller nation had been annexed by the U.S. in the year following the assassination in Japan. It was the first time that the Americans had claimed territory so far away from their continent. Yuri was certain that if the annexation hadn’t gone through, the elections would have been cooked so that a puppet Prime Minister would have won.

Now that Yuri knew what to look for, he could see E.R.I.S. operating all over the world. Even the American government had no idea how badly compromised it had become thanks to the organization - it looked like E.R.I.S. had plans for the upcoming American elections as well. According to Otabek, his American fellows were working overtime to protect the unbought and unbossed candidates from being outright murdered in the streets on the campaign trail. It was kind of sickening, now that Yuri thought about it.

And the same thing was happening all over the E.U. and Asia. E.R.I.S. had been growing bolder, and Yuri could confirm that.

And then, there was WOOHP. (The name still made him laugh.) The World Organization for Human Protection, which had sprung up to counter E.R.I.S. all over the globe, had stepped in after Viktor had broken free of his mission in Sochi and encountered one of their own agents who had been sent to flip him. WOOHP had been observing Viktor ever since they’d been able to unravel his aliases, and had noticed his allegiance to E.R.I.S. cracking. Then they’d worked to turn him.

In Sochi, he’d apparently agreed to flip with one condition: that they get Yuri out as well.

It would be touching if Viktor wasn’t so goddamn insufferable.

The Japanese agent who had flipped Viktor had been the one who volunteered to extract him in Tokyo, which was what had ended up happening. Viktor had been talking to Agent Katsuki for weeks before the red folder mission had been assigned, and once he’d been given his mission he saw the setup for what it was and set the gears in motion to get out. Then, he’d proceeded to act as obviously compromised as he could, and maneuvered himself to be taken out by “gunshot” at the banquet. He’d been hoping to take Yuri with him, but he hadn’t been able to flip Yuri during the time they’d had. Yuri had apparently proven to be too stubborn to extract willingly then, so Otabek had volunteered to work on flipping him.

Yuri wasn’t even mad. Otabek was a lot cooler than Viktor, all things said.

(Small comfort, though: Agent Katsuki had indeed actually shot Viktor through the shoulder, and Viktor had taken the better part of a year to recover from it. A grosser revelation: Viktor had proceeded to marry Agent Katsuki as soon as he was well enough and officially retired from fieldwork. _Disgusting._ Apparently they’d been having _meetings_ outside of missions in the months before Tokyo.)

“I want to get out, though,” Yuri said. He ran his fingers up and down his coffee cup. “I want to see my grandfather again.”

His grandfather had been relocated to a safe zone outside of E.R.I.S.’s influence, a small seaside town in Japan where no one thought to look for him. Yuri had worried that E.R.I.S. might engineer an unfortunate accident for Grandpa once Yuri started being difficult, and WOOHP had taken precautions right away. He’d spoken with Grandpa over a secure line, and had been able to confirm that his grandfather really _was_ safe in rural Japan. WOOHP had done a _lot_ to gain his trust over the last year.

Otabek nodded. “He really wants to see you. Says he’s been waiting for years to cook for you again.”

Yuri grinned. “He makes the best damn pirozhki I’ve ever had. You gotta try it.”

“Oh, for sure,” Otabek agreed. He eyed the street. “That’s the signal,” he said, when a car started a few doors down. “Your handlers shook Mickey and Sara. I’ll see you later.”

“Be safe,” Yuri said. “Davai.”

Otabek shot him a thumbs up before taking his leave.

Yuri was sipping at his cooling coffee as Evgeni finally rounded the corner and collapsed into the vacant seat at Yuri’s table. “Tourists,” the older agent said, waving to a waitress. “They’re like cockroaches. Unbelievable.”

Yuri fought to keep from smirking. “I’m sure. Anyway, he hasn’t left the apartment yet,” he said, referring to their current target.

“Good,” Evgeni said. “Maybe this mission will go right for once.”

Yuri didn’t answer, already running through the plan to protect the activist that he was meant to kill. The WOOHP agents for the region, Mila and Georgi, had already made contact with the man and put a plan in place, Yuri just had to do his part.

Well, Yuri knew how to do that. He could do that until he was extracted. And if he had to make an ungraceful exit before planned, he planned on raising as much hell as possible.

After all, E.R.I.S. was named for the goddess of chaos. He could _definitely_ live up to that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, the "good guy" spy agency is a shout-out to the one from _Totally Spies_.

**Author's Note:**

> Not tagged for spoiler reasons: a character is "killed" on-screen to fake their death.
> 
>  
> 
> Some informative videos about spy tropes and reality:
> 
> [Buzzfeed Multiplayer: I Was A Russian Spy And Failed A Mission](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXu5cK5q-Z8)
> 
> [Buzzfeed Multiplayer: I Helped The FBI After Leaving The KGB](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y6ybOV0Q_g)
> 
> [Buzzfeed Multiplayer: I Hired A Russian Spy To Hide Secret Money](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDy7hFbtGqU)
> 
> [ WIRED: Former CIA Operative Explains How Spies Use Disguises](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JASUsVY5YJ8)
> 
> [WIRED: Former CIA Chief of Disguise Breaks Down 30 Spy Scenes From Film & TV](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUqeBMP8nEg)


End file.
